Various types of gear change or transmission arrangements for automotive vehicles are known, in which a servo motor or magnetically controllable positioning element is arranged to control the throttle or other fuel control device positioned between the accelerator or fuel control pedal and the actual fuel control element. The fuel control element may be, for example, the throttle in a carburetor engine, or another control element, such as a potentiometer, or the like, for a fuel injection system. The positioning element which controls the amount of fuel is interposed between the actual fuel controller and the operator controllable engine control element, typically the accelerator pedal, so that the actual deflection of the accelerator pedal is not transmitted to the positioning element as such, but rather decoupled therefrom. Consequently, it is possible to operate the fuel metering element--the throttle or other fuel control element--in accordance with control considerations which are different from the actual operation of the accelerator pedal. Such control considerations may, for example, be used to insure that gear shifting is carried out smoothly or, for example, to optimize fuel economy or the like. A gear change system including engine control is described in the referenced U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,700, ESPENSCHIED et al., assigned to the assignee of the present application.
The transmission control system is particularly applicable to automatic transmissions. Automatic transmissions, due to their innate construction, have a higher fuel consumption than manually controlled transmissions.
It has previously been proposed to couple manual transmissions to a clutch which is operated under automatic control. Clutches of this type which, for example, may include centrifugal clutches, are expensive and lead to malfunction, by causing undesired gear changes if the operator, for example while a gear change occurs, erroneously presses hard on the accelerator pedal.